THORP inquiry follows alarms incident

A new inquiry into safety procedures at the THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield has begun following allegations that safety alarms were effectively ignored during an incident last month.

The inquiry, which has been set up by the UK Health and Safety Executive's nuclear installations inspectorate, follows an incident in which British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) workers monitoring high-level waste tanks failed to act on warning alarms over a two to three hour time span.

High-level radioactive waste, which is the most hazardous material at Sellafield, is stored in the tanks, which are constantly cooled and ventilated. Any disruption of the cooling process could result in what is described as an "off-site release of radioactivity". BNFL has also been asked by the inspectorate to provide its own report on the incident within four weeks. Green Party TD Mr Trevor Sargent has described the workers' alleged action as "an unbelievable level of negligence". Mr Sargent said that "for over 2-1/2 hours the alarms were ignored or overridden" and that a number of operations at Sellafield had been suspended, including reprocessing at THORP.

However a spokesman for BNFL said "there was no failure of a cooling system but a blockage in a ventilation system". He added that the delay in responding to the alarms was unacceptable and the shut down was ordered by the base manager as a result of that, rather than anything else. Mr Shaun Burnie, of Greenpeace International, said the high-active waste had to be kept constantly cooled to prevent a build-up of gases. Should a tank not be cooled it would explode into the atmosphere and contaminate hundreds of square kilometres.